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Hey Mama,
Last week I did a video for the Real Life Momming Group about the 'Covid Crush' hitting us hard: messy homes, stir-crazy kids (and parents!), remote learning and a general feeling of drowning! (You can find that video here). While all of these factors are indeed crushing, remote learning seems to be the heaviest, and I promised to talk about it this week.
So, you're getting a little peek behind the paywall! This is the exact guidance I share with my clients who ask for help with remote learning and it covers 3 areas: Management, Parenting, and Mindset. You'll find these touchstones throughout my practice because I believe that it's not enough to teach killer parenting skills. We need an answer to the chaos and emotional rollercoaster that makes those parenting skills hard, too! This is one hundred percent true when it comes to remote schooling.
Mindset: Define your priorities and what success looks like. I suggest deciding that academics are less important than peace and respect. Academic gaps can be easily recovered later. Recovery from 10 months of misbehavior and fighting is a harder bounce-back. I encourage parents to define success in terms of energy and emotion: Did you calmly enforce your boundaries today? Did you give loving consequences? Did you hold your child accountable without carrying their burden? Notice that all of these metrics have nothing to do with how the child decided to behave or acheive. We cannot define our success by others' decisions and accomplishments!
Management: Create a dedicated routine and boundaries.
- The biggest contributor to parent explosions is multi-tasking. I strongly encourage you NOT to fall into this trap. If that means school happens after your work hours are done, so be it. If that means you shift your work hours or tag team with a coparent, great! If that means you bring in a nanny, do a kid swap, create a learning pod, or move your MIL into the house so that there is 1 person playing teacher/principal/lunch chef during school, I salute you!!!
- Set clear boundaries with YOURSELF: never be more invested in your child's schoolwork than they are. Schoolwork is a child's responsibility, and we set that expectation by not taking it on for ourselves.
Parenting: Boundaries are only as good as their enforcement. Expect that kids will try to cross your boundaries. They will goof off in class, they will whine and avoid homework, they will interrupt you when it's your chance to get work done, they will sneak screentime. This is normal. Be ready with a calm, loving consequence that hands your child's problem back to them. The unspoken message in this approach becomes: "You get to decide how you behave. I love you no matter what. Here's what happens when we make a bad decision." The mindset that academics are less important than peace and respect will help you stick with this!
If you know you want to adopt these approaches but can't figure out how to make it happen, set up a free Discovery Call and I'll walk you through it step by step!
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